Ron Paul's defenders have twisted themselves into all sorts of knots as they try to white wash these inconvenient facts. Their most common claim is that because Ron Paul supports ending the ruinous War on Drugs (with its well documented racial disparities in enforcement, imprisonment, and punishment), that he is a believer in racial equality. This is a symptom of a larger dynamic at work in post-Civil Rights era racial discourse

Primarily, the bar for what constitutes racism has been set so high that even the most obvious examples of racial animus have to be couched in careful terms lest an "innocent" white person be branded a bigot. Second, the definition of what constitutes "racism" has been narrowed down to include only bogeyman and caricatures of White wickedness, White hate, White sheets, White race pride tattoos, White hands holding nooses, and White hands burning crosses. And as an auxiliary-enabler of post-Civil Rights race discourse, the lazy newspeak of "playing the race card" was invented precisely to serve as a defense mechanism that exists only to enable such specious concepts as "white oppression" or "reverse racism."

Of course, real life is much more complicated. Here, the argument that Ron Paul is not a racist because he wants to end the War on Drugs is a logical fallacy. Racist people can support policies that are "race neutral." Racists can be "good people." Anti-racists and progressives can be forward thinking in some areas and unrepentant bigots in others. And of course, while many are loathe to admit it, racism is a sin of both liberals and conservatives alike.

As I am so fond of saying, history is once more our greatest teacher. For example, there were abolitionists who wanted to end slavery and the vile trade in human beings, yet who also thought that black Americans were subhuman. There were abolitionists who urged blacks to rise up against the evils of the Southern slaveocracy, yet these same people thought that the presence of Africans in America was a problem to be solved by colonization because their presence was antithetical to white democracy.

Hinton Rowan Helper was one such figure. His 1868 work, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, was second only to Uncle Tom's Cabin in its influence on the public imagination about the evils of chattel slavery. Helper was also an unrepentant white supremacist.

In every part of the United States, there is a broad and impassable line of demarcation between every man who has one drop of African blood in his veins, and every other class in the community. The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society, — prejudices which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion itself, can subdue, — mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in this'country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society ; and from that station he can never rise, be his talents, his enterprise, his virtues what they may." — African Repository , Vol. IV., page 118.

Even more pithy, Helper included how:

"'The negro is not wholly without talents, but they are limited to imitation, — the learning of what has been previously known. He has neither invention nor judgment. Africans may be consid- ered docile, but few of them are judicious, and thus in mental qualities we are disposed to see a certain analogy with the apes, whose imitative powers are proverbial.'" — Burmeister's Black Man, page 14.

Or how about this gem of common sense race science:

"So great a difference of opinion has ever existed upon the intrinsic value of the negro, that the very perplexity of the ques- tion is a proof that he is altogether a distinct variety. So long as it is generally considered that the negro and the white man are to be governed by the same laws and guided by the same management, so long will the former remain a thorn in the side of every community to which he may unhappily belong. When the horse and the ass shall be found to match in double harness, the white man and the African black will pull together under the same re- gime. It is the grand error of equalizing that which is unequal that has lowered the negro character, and made the black man a reproach." — Baker's Great Basin of the Nile, page 195.

People are complicated. One can be an abolitionist like Hinton Rowan Helper and believe that black humanity and personhood are sub-par, well below that of whites, and that African Americans have no place in American society. Ron Paul can be right on foreign relations and government waste for example, but dead wrong on matters of race, justice, and civil rights.

Such is life. Despite the temptations, there are no easy answers. Some in the American public will see Ron Paul's racism as necessarily compromising his vision, ethics, and judgement more generally; it is a first order problem, not a mere inconvenience. For Ron Paul's supporters, attitudes about black people are secondary to his libertarian vision for the United States. How a person reconciles this matter tells us a great deal about their own ethics and values.

On questions of race and justice the personal is indeed the political. The challenge here--and for libertarianism more broadly--is how these personal choices become impositions on the full citizenship, full rights, and full personhood of other people. To this point, Ron Paul's version of libertarianism offers no satisfying answers for those who are not White, not privileged, and outside of the moneyed classes.

Is he a racist? I do not know. But the policies which Ron Paul advocates, and the philosophy which he subscribes to, are none too friendly to people of color. For me, that is enough of a disqualification.

Why don't you add "the Compassion on Ron Paul" to the list of MUST WATCH...

Ron Paul has given free medical care to people that couldnt afford it INCLUDING BLACKS... You want to say he is avoiding a Question he has ANSWERED TOO Many times already and it has always been the same Answer.

What should be more important is the WHOLE Video Clip and what he said anout blacks and the DRUG WAR.. That was a CLASSIC MLK Speech!!!

Their most common claim is that because Ron Paul supports ending the ruinous War on Drugs (with its well documented racial disparities in enforcement, imprisonment, and punishment), that he is a believer in racial equality. This is a symptom of a larger dynamic at work in post-Civil Rights era racial discourse

Why haven't responsible negroes other than former mayor Kurt Schmoke called for the end of the ruinous War on Drugs given its disastrous effect on black folks? The tragedy is that none of the folks who ought to have been accountable to constituents who've been damaged by this racist policy have in fact been accountable to their constituents - leaving the field ripe for someone as exacrable as Paul to step in and seem "revolutionary".

Primarily, the bar for what constitutes racism has been set so high that even the most obvious examples of racial animus have to be couched in careful terms lest an "innocent" white person be branded a bigot.

No.

Primarily the bar has been set so low for benchmarking the political leadership of 2nd/3rd line inheritors that no one has called them to accounts for their gross passivity in the face of this long-term, low-intensity warfare against black and brown males.

The 2nd/3rd line inheritors is comprised of spineless cowards lacking the administrative courage to step into the breach and do something that Paul appears to have shown the resolve to do.

What should be more important is the WHOLE Video Clip and what he said anout blacks and the DRUG WAR.. That was a CLASSIC MLK Speech!!!

9_9 oh brother.

People like you need to delete those three magical initials "MLK" from your vocabulary until you've gone to this site and memorized everything in it, because I can already tell, you're one of those types who thinks all "MLK" ever said was content of character and I have a dream.

What's with the assumption that ending the drug war will somehow put an end to the excessive policing of people of color? Ending the drug war will not magically make the police go away. Sure it might reduce their presence for a while, but they'll find a way to get back under some other pretense. It doesn't reduce the root cause of the problem: racism.

Good article on this issue: http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/analysis/three-good-reasons-people-color-question-drug-legalization-movement/

Also it appears Ron Paul has conveniently forgotten, ignored, or (most likely) never heard of MLK Jr.'s calls for more government intervention in the economy, including leading the Poor People's Campaign, supporting strikes, and even calling for a transition to "democratic socialism!" Maybe next he'll claim that Cesar Chavez was a libertarian too.

Chauncey, some of your readers have serious reading comprehension problems... makes sense if they are also Ron Paul supporters. :)

And is Paul really against the War on Drugs? I don't think we can say that with any certainty. He's against federal agencies, but his fixation on "states rights" nonsense is so great that I'd expect he'd be all for localized wars on drugs.

You are cuh-LEARLY capable of rationalizing and justifying damn near any kind of weak, tepid, 20 years late - and 40 congress critters short - "gesture"...,

naacp can't even elect a damn dog-catcher or make members out of anybody under the age of 60, yet you would earnestly pretend that this limp-wristed gesture decades after Paul was calling for the end of criminalization even comes close?

Ron Paul took an opportunity during the PBS Republican Presidential Debates, moderated by Tavis Smiley, to call for end to the Drug War.

"Prohibition didn't work and prohibition on drugs hasn't worked either."

Ron Paul cited the unfair disparity in the percentage of blacks imprisoned over drug offenses in proportion with the relative percentage of black drug users, giving example to the system's racial bias.

Paul also noted the money wasted on the so-called 'War on Drugs' since the 70s when it's clear that drug use and prison capacity has only swelled in wake of the profit driven motives of the "war."

Ron Paul has been bringing it hard right up the middle of the field for YEARS - including at Republican television debates in 2007 hosted by Tavis Smiley.

You're the MAIN one focused on the influence this group of negroes has in academia, local politics, etc.

Equating the 2nd/3rd line inheritors with the naacp is all down to you 2nd stringer. I'm a lot more expansive in my indictment of the past three generations of self-dealing, non constituent-serving incompetents at the forefront of negrological developments in America.

AFAIC - the whole and entire black studies "movement" comprises a neutering political counterinsurgency against black political consciousness - and more importantly - community activism in America.

You're moving the goalposts, champ. I understand that you've been scarred in some way by these negroes, but don't let your emotion cloud your ability to reason.

Don't worry, C-Nu vision not blurry.

But it's comedy gold reading your feeble attempt to marginalize my critique as "emotional" in the context of the neverending racism-chasing that passes for analysis and "criticism" hereabouts.

Also, I'm not sure why you think we ride for these negroes so hard. We've been supercritical of them. Check the archives.

I ain't checkin.a.dayyum.thing.

Pull up 2 or three of your own self-evaluative, self-critical golden oldies, and let's see an example of your "supercritical" benchmarking of the categorical political failure that has been responsible negroe "leadership" for the past 40 years.

I'm with Oh Crap on the matter of Ron Paul being a racist. I judge such things by the rules of horse shoes. Close is close enough to win the point.

Or, to get more specific, in my mind there is no appreciable daylight between actually, deeply believing in racist thinking, and merely and cynically, even if negliglently and carelessly promoting those ideas. Politics isn't acting. You "publish" things under your own name, be it in a newsletter or just with the poorly chosen words that fly out of your mouth, time to time, and you make a statement to the world: "I stand by this."

So I have no problem making the old confederate "own" what he previously claimed to "own" out in the marketplace, by publishing it out in the marketplace, under his own name.

Oh. Ironically enough, I picked up a new phrase from some wing nut author in a "column" for the Washington Times, of all wing nut rags. The phrase is "Embedded Racism." Great visual, particulary for the kinds of wing nuts who either personally, or in defense of their like-minded friends engage in mealy-mouthed dissembling on the order of:

You realize of course that I've literally been on these Interwebs for the past 30 years.

What means "win the Internet"?

What means "in a feedback loop"?

Cause you know I like you each of you like I like little play cousins, please hep a old man out. What you you young people talkin bout?

Meanwhile, here's an original thought from Bro. Feed that seems most apropos this post's chasing with it's attendant amen chorus.

The "Dark Matter" Perspective

The Dark Matter perspective says:

If we look at the entire universe of forces that bear down upon Black America;

* Those which lift us up because we ORGANIZE them

* Those which push us downward - both for malicious intent against us (ie: due to racism) AND because it is 100% natural for a group to pursue their own interests and not of others ( we do the same thing)

IN ADDITION to the acceptance that GRAVITY wants all players to remain at "ground level" (and thus we can't confuse "gravity" with "oppression" but instead need to have a force of uplift that factors for gravity).........

the "Dark Matter" is the set of forces that the Black Racial Services Machine DOES NOT ADDRESS because it is counter to their present competencies.

The job of all Black people who seriously want to improve our people by mitigating our problems via management is to first gain a full understanding of all of the forces in this "Universe".

As we look at the "confidence men" (on either side) that seek to impress upon us - they rely on the fact that the "Black Rank & File" are focused on that which is readily visible to them. They know Black people's sensitivities (racial slights) because THEY ARE BLACK.

To see the NAACP, for example, protest against the Death Penalty yet have no compulsion to note that IN GEORGIA ALONE - 10 State Sponsored Executions versus more than 350 homicides in the state year over year - proves that their focus is askew.

Not that they pulled the trigger. In as much as Blacks are highly overrepresented in the homicide count - they understand that the CULTURE and SOCIAL RULES within the Black community is considerably within the hands of their "joint venture partners". Thus the "Black Racial Services Machine" model.

I do not see myself as a 'thorn in their side' - maliciously trying to run interference.

I SEE THEIR ANTICS as a purposeful set of interference that keeps the Black community from developing more effective strategies where we manage our people THROUGH OUR INSTITUTIONS.

If they can't accept this as a mandate - they need to be disallowed from assuming power in our key institutions.

I am beginning to be more impressed with this brother than I am with myself....,

Tips and Support Are Always Welcome

Who is Chauncey DeVega?

I have been a guest on the BBC, National Public Radio, Ring of Fire Radio, Ed Schultz, Sirius XM's Make it Plain, Joshua Holland's Alternet Radio Hour, the Thom Hartmann radio show, the Burt Cohen show, and Our Common Ground.

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I am a contributing writer for Salon and Alternet.

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